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PSYCHOANALYSIS 

AND THE 

UNCONSCIOUS 



Psychoanalysis 

and the 

Unconscious 



BY 

D. H. LAWRENCE 



V 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS SELTZER 

1921 






Copyright, 1921, by 

Thomas Seltzer, Inc. 



All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



JUN -8 1921 
©CI.A617341 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Psychoanalysis vs. Morality 9 

II. The Incest Motive and Ideal- 
ism 26 

III. The Birth of Consciousness 45 

IV, The Child and His Mother 64 

V. The Lover and the Beloved 83 

VI. Human Relations and the 

Unconscious 102 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

AND THE 

UNCONSCIOUS 



PSYCHOANALYSIS 

and the 

UNCONSCIOUS 

CHAPTER I 

PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY 

Psychoanalysis has sprung many surprises 
on us, performed more than one volte face 
before our indignant eyes. No sooner had we 
got used to the psychiatric quack who vehe- 
mently demonstrated the serpent of sex coiled 
round the root of all our actions, no sooner 
had we begun to feel honestly uneasy about 
our lurking complexes, than lo and behold 
the psychoanalytic gentleman reappeared on 
the stage with a theory of pure psychology. 
The medical faculty, which was on hot bricks 
over the therapeutic innovations, heaved a sigh 

9 



IO PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

of relief as it watched the ground warming 
under the feet of the professional psycholo- 
gists. 

This, however, was not the end. The ears 
of the ethnologist began to tingle, the phil- 
osopher felt his gorge rise, and at last the 
moralist knew he must rush in. By this time 
psychoanalysis had become a public danger. 
The mob was. on the alert. The CEdipus com- 
plex was a household word, the incest motive 
a commonplace of tea-table chat. Amateur 
analyses became the vogue. "Wait till you've 
been analyzed," said one man to another, with 
varying intonation. A sinister look came into 
the eyes of the initiates — the famous, or in- 
famous, Freud look. You could recognize 
it everywhere, wherever you went. 

Psychoanalysts know what the end will be. 
They have crept in among us as healers and 
physicians; growing bolder, they have asserted 



PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY II 

their authority as scientists; two more minutes 
and they will appear as apostles. Have we 
not seen and heard the ex cathedra Jung? 
And does it need a prophet to discern that 
Freud is on the brink of a Weltanschauung — 
or at least a Menschanschauung, which is a 
much more risky affair? What detains him? 
Two things, First and foremost, the moral 
issue. And next, but more vital, he can't get 
down to the rock on which he must build his 
church. 

Let us look to ourselves. This new doctrine 
— it will be called no less — has been subtly 
and insidiously suggested to us, gradually in- 
oculated into us. It is true that doctors are 
the priests, nay worse, the medicine-men of 
our decadent society. Psychoanalysis has 
made the most of the opportunity. 

First and foremost the issue is a moral is- 
sue. It is not here a matter of reform, new 



1 2 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

moral values. It is the life or death of all 
morality. The leaders among the psycho- 
analysts know what they have in hand. Prob- 
ably most of their followers are ignorant, and 
therefore pseudo-innocent. But it all amounts 
to the same thing. Psychoanalysis is out, un- 
der a therapeutic disguise, to do away entirely 
with the moral faculty in man. Let us fling 
the challenge, and then we can take sides in 
all fairness. 

The psychoanalytic leaders know what they 
are about, and shrewdly keep quiet, going 
gently. Yet, however gently they go, they set 
the moral stones rolling. At every step the 
most innocent and unsuspecting analyst starts 
a little landslide. The old world is yielding 
under us. Without any direct attack, it comes 
loose under the march of the psychoanalyst, 
and we hear the dull rumble of the incipient 
avalanche. We are in for a debacle. 



PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY 1 3 

But at least let us know what we are in for. 
If we are to rear a serpent against ourselves, 
let us at least refuse to nurse it in our temples 
or to call it the cock of Esculapius. It is time 
the white garb of the therapeutic cant was 
stripped off the psychoanalyst. And now that 
we feel the strange crackling and convulsion 
in our moral foundations, let us at least look 
at the house which we are bringing down over 
our heads so blithely. 

Long ago we watched in frightened antici- 
pation when Freud set out on his adventure 
into the hinterland of human consciousness. 
He was seeking for the unknown sources of 
the mysterious stream of consciousness. Im- 
mortal phrase of the immortal James! Oh 
stream of hell which undermined my adoles- 
cence! The stream of consciousness! I felt it 
streaming through my brain, in at one ear and 
out at the other. And again I was sure it 



14 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

went round in my cranium, like Homer's 
Ocean, encircling my established mind. And 
sometimes I felt it must bubble up in the cere- 
bellum and wind its way through all the con- 
volutions of the true brain. Horrid stream! 
Whence did it come, and whither w T as it 
bound? The stream of consciousness! 

And so, who could remain unmoved when 
Freud seemed suddenly to plunge towards the 
origins? Suddenly he stepped out of the con- 
scious into the unconscious, out of the every- 
where into the nowhere, like some supreme 
explorer. He walks straight through the wall 
of sleep, and we hear him rumbling in the 
cavern of dreams. The impenetrable is not 
impenetrable, unconsciousness is not nothing- 
ness. It is sleep, that wall of darkness which 
limits our day. Walk bang into the wall, and 
behold the wall isn't there. It is the vast dark- 
ness of a cavern's mouth, the cavern of an- 



PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY 1 5 

terior darkness whence issues the stream of 
consciousness. 

With dilated hearts we watched Freud dis- 
appearing into the cavern of darkness, which 
is sleep and unconsciousness to us, darkness 
which issues in the foam of all our day's con- 
sciousness. He was making for the origins. 
We watched his ideal candle flutter and go 
small. Then we waited, as men do wait, al- 
ways expecting the wonder of wonders. He 
came back with dreams to sell. 

But sweet heaven, what merchandise! 
What dreams, dear heart! What was there in 
the cave? Alas that we ever looked! Noth- 
ing but a huge slimy serpent of sex, and heaps 
of excrement, and a myriad repulsive little 
horrors spawned between sex and excrement. 

Is it true? Does the great unknown of sleep 
contain nothing else? No lovely spirits in the 
anterior regions of our being? None! Im- 



1 6 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

agine the unspeakable horror of the repres- 
sions Freud brought home to us. Gagged, 
bound, maniacal repressions, sexual com- 
plexes, faecal inhibitions, dream-monsters. 
We tried to repudiate them. But no, they 
were there, demonstrable. These were the 
horrid things that ate our souls and caused 
our helpless neuroses. 

We had felt that perhaps we were wrong 
inside, but we had never imagined it so bad. 
However, in the name of healing and medi- 
cine we prepared to accept it all. If it was 
all just a result of illness, we were prepared to 
go through with it. The analyst promised us 

that the tangle of complexes would be un- 
ravelled, the obsessions would evaporate, the 

monstrosities would dissolve, sublimate, when 
brought into the light of day. Once all the 
dream-horrors were translated into full con- 
sciousness, they would sublimate into — well, 



PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY 17 

we don't quite know what. But anyhow, they 
would sublimate. Such is the charm of a new 
phrase that we accepted this sublimation proc- 
ess without further question. If our com- 
plexes were going to sublimate once they were 
surgically exposed to full mental conscious- 
ness, why, best perform the operation. 

Thus analysis set off gaily on its therapeutic 
course. But like Hippolytus, we ran too near 
the sea's edge. After all, if complexes exist 
only as abnormalities which can be removed, 
psychoanalysis has not far to go. Our own 
horses ran away with us. We began to realize 
that complexes were not just abnormalities. 
They were part of the stock-in-trade of the 
normal unconscious. The only abnormality, 
so far, lies in bringing them into consciousness. 

This creates a new issue. Psychoanalysis, 
the moment it begins to demonstrate the nature 
of the unconscious, is assuming the role of psy- 



1 8 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

chology. Thus the new science of psychology 
proceeds to inform us that our complexes are 
not just mere interlockings in the mechanism 
of the psyche, as was taught by one of the 
first and most brilliant of the analysts, a man 
now forgotten. v He fully realized that even 
the psyche itself depends on a certain organic, 
mechanistic activity, even as life depends on 
the mechanistic organism of the body. The 
mechanism of the psyche could have its 
hitches, certain parts could stop working, even 
as the parts of the body can stop their func- 
tioning. This arrest in some part of the func- 
tioning psyche gave rise to a complex, even 
as the stopping of one little cog-wheel in a 
machine will arrest a whole section of that 
machine. This was the origin of the complex- 
theory, purely mechanistic. Now the analyst 
found that a complex did not necessarily van- 
ish when brought into consciousness. Why 



PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY 1 9 

should it? Hence he decided that it did not 
arise from the stoppage of any little wheel. 
For it refused to disappear, no matter how 
many psychic wheels were started. Finally, 
then, a complex could not be regarded as the 
result of an inhibition. 

Here is the new problem. If a complex is 
not caused by the inhibition of some so-called 
normal sex-impulse, what on earth is it caused 
by? It obviously refuses to sublimate — or to 
come undone when exposed and prodded. It 
refuses to answer to the promptings of normal 
sex-impulse. You can remove all possible in- 
hibitions of the normal sex desire, and still 
you cannot remove the complex. All you have 
done is to make conscious a desire which 
previously was unconscious. 

This is the moral dilemma of psychoanal- 
ysis. The analyst set out to cure neurotic hu- 
manity by removing the cause of the neurosis. 



20 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

He finds that the cause of neurosis lies in some 
unadmitted sex desire. After all he has said 
about inhibition of normal sex, he is brought 
at last to realize that at the root of almost 
every neurosis lies some incest-craving, and 
that this incest-craving is not the result of in- 
hibition of normal sex-craving. Now see the 
dilemma — it is a fearful one. If the incest- 
craving is not the outcome of any inhibition 
of normal desire, if it actually exists and re- 
fuses to give way before any criticism, what 
then? What remains but to accept it as part 
of the normal sex-manifestation? 

Here is an issue which analysis is perfectly 
willing to face. Among themselves the ana- 
lysts are bound to accept the incest-craving as 
part of the normal sexuality of man, normal, 
but suppressed, because of moral and perhaps 
biological fear. Once, however, you accept the 
incest-craving as part of the normal sexuality 



PSYCHOANALYSIS vs. MORALITY 21 

of man, you must remove all repression of 
incest itself. In fact, you must admit incest 
as you now admit sexual marriage, as a duty 
even. Since at last it works out that neurosis 
is not the result of inhibition of so-called nor- 
mal sex, but of inhibition of incest-craving. 
Any inhibition must be wrong, since inevitably 
in the end it causes neurosis and insanity. 
Therefore the inhibition of incest-craving is 
wrong, and this wrong is the cause of prac- 
tically all modern neurosis and insanity. 

Psychoanalysis will never openly state this 
conclusion. But it is to this conclusion that 
every analyst must, willy-nilly, consciously or 
unconsciously, bring his patient. 

Trigant Burrow says that Freud's uncon- 
scious does but represent our conception of 
conscious sexual life as this latter exists in a 
state of repression. Thus Freud's unconscious 
amounts practically to no more than our re- 



22 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

pressed incest impulses. Again, Burrow says 
that it is knowledge of sex that constitutes sin, 
and not sex itself. It is when the mind turns 
to consider and know the great affective-pas- 
sional functions and emotions that sin enters. 
Adam and Eve fell, not because they had sex, 
or even because they committed the sexual act, 
but because they became aware of their sex 
and of the possibility of the act. When sex 
became to them a mental object — that is, when 
they discovered that they could deliberately 
enter upon and enjoy and even provoke sexual 
activity in themselves, then they were cursed 
and cast out of Eden. Then man became self- 
responsible; he entered on his own career. 

Both these assertions by Burrow seem to us 
brilliantly true. But must we inevitably draw 
the conclusion psychoanalysis draws? Be- 
cause we discover in the unconscious the re- 
pressed body of our incest-craving, and be- 



PSYCHOANALYSIS VS. MORALITY 23 

cause the recognition of desire, the making a 
mental objective of a certain desire causes the 
introduction of the sin motive, the desire in 
itself being beyond criticism or moral judg- 
ment, must we therefore accept the incest-crav- 
ing as part of our natural desire and proceed 
to put it into practice, as being at any rate a 
lesser evil than neurosis and insanity? 

It is a question. One thing, however, psy- 
choanalysis all along the line fails to deter- 
mine, and that is the nature of the pristine un- 
conscious in man. The incest-craving is or is 
not inherent in the pristine psyche. When 
Adam and Eve became aware of sex in them- 
selves, they became aware of that which was 
pristine in them, and which preceded all 
knowing. But when the analyst discovers the 
incest motive in the unconscious, surely he is 
only discovering a term of humanity's re- 
pressed idea of sex. It is not even suppressed 



24 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

sex-consciousness, but repressed. That is, it 
is nothing pristine and anterior to mentality. 
It is in itself the mind's ulterior motive. That 
is, the incest-craving is propagated in the 
pristine unconscious by the mind itself, even 
though unconsciously. The mind acts as in- 
cubus and procreator of its own horrors, de- 
liberately unconsciously. And the incest mo- 
tive is in its origin not a pristine impulse, but 
a logical extension of the existent idea of sex 
and love. The mind, that is, transfers the idea 
of incest into the affective-passional psyche, 
and keeps it there as a repressed motive. 

This is as yet a mere assertion. It cannot be 
made good until we determine the nature of 
the true, pristine unconscious, in which all our 
genuine impulse arises — a very different affair 
from that sack of horrors which psychoana- 
lysts would have us believe is source of mo- 
tivity. The Freudian unconscious is the cellar 



PSYCHOANALYSIS VS. MORALITY 25 

in which the mind keeps its own bastard 
spawn. The true unconscious is the well-head, 
the fountain of real motivity. The sex of 
which Adam and Eve became conscious de- 
rived from the very God who bade them be 
not conscious of it — it was not spawn produced 
by secondary propagation from the mental 
consciousness itself. 



CHAPTER II 

THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 

It IS obvious we cannot recover our moral 
footing until we can in some way determine 
the true nature of the unconscious. The word 
unconscious itself is a mere definition by nega- 
tion and has no positive meaning. Freud no 
doubt prefers it for this reason. He rejects 
subconscious and preconscious, because both 
these would imply a sort of nascent conscious- 
ness, the shadowy half-consciousness which 
precedes mental realization. And by his un- 
conscious he intends no such thing. He wishes 
rather to convey, we imagine, that which re- 
coils from consciousness, that which reacts in 
the psyche away from mental consciousness. 

26 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM T] 

His unconscious is, we take it, that part of the 
human consciousness which, though mental, 
ideal in its nature, yet is unwilling to expose 
itself to full recognition, and so recoils back 
into the affective regions and acts there as a 
secret agent, unconfessed, unadmitted, potent, 
and usually destructive. The whole body of 
our repressions makes up our unconscious. 

The question lies here: whether a repres- 
sion is a primal impulse which has been de- 
terred from fulfilment, or whether it is an 
idea which is refused enactment. Is a repres- 
sion a repressed passional impulse, or is it an 
idea which we suppress and refuse to put into 
practice — nay, which we even refuse to own at 
all, a disowned, outlawed idea, which exists 
rebelliously outside the pale? 

Man can inhibit the true passional impulses 
and so produce a derangement in the psyche. 
This is a truism nowadays, and we are grate- 



28 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

ful to psychoanalysis for helping to make it so. 
But man can do more than this. Finding him- 
self in a sort of emotional cul de sac, he can 
proceed to deduce from his given emotional 
and passional premises conclusions which are 
not emotional or passional at all, but just 
logical, abstract, ideal. That is, a man finds 
it impossible to realize himself in marriage. 
He recognizes the fact that his emotional, even 
passional, regard for his mother is deeper than 
it ever could be for a wife. This makes him 
unhappy, for he knows that passional com- 
munion is not complete unless it be also sexual. 
He has a body of sexual passion which he can- 
not transfer to a wife. He has a profound 
love for his mother. Shut in between walls of 
tortured and increasing passion, he must find 
some escape or fall down the pit of insanity 
and death. What is the only possible escape? 
To seek in the arms of the mother the refuge 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 29 

which offers nowhere else. And so the incest- 
rnotive is born. All the labored explanations 
of the psychoanalysts are unnecessary. The 
incest motive is a logical deduction of the hu- 
man reason, which has recourse to this last 
extremity, to save itself. Why is the human 
reason in peril? That is another story. At 
the moment we are merely considering the 
origin of the incest motive. 

The logical conclusion of incest is, of course, 
a profound decision in the human soul, a de- 
cision affecting the deepest passional centers. 
It rouses the deepest instinctive opposition. 
And therefore it must be kept secret until this 
opposition is either worn away or persuaded 
away. Hence the repression and ultimate dis- 
closure. 

Now here we see the secret working of the 
process of idealism. By idealism we under- 
stand the motivizing of the great affective 



30 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

sources by means of ideas mentally derived. 
As for example the incest motive, which is 
first and foremost a logical deduction made by 
the human reason, even if unconsciously made, 
and secondly is introduced into the affective, 
passional sphere, where it now proceeds to 
serve as a principle for action. 

This motivizing of the passional sphere 
from the ideal is the final peril of human con- 
sciousness. It is the death of all spontaneous, 
creative life, and the substituting of the 
mechanical principle. 

It is obvious that the ideal becomes a me- 
chanical principle, if it be applied to the af- 
fective soul as a fixed motive. An ideal 
established in control of the passional soul is 
no more and no less than a supreme machine- 
principle. And a machine, as we know, is the 
active unit of the material world. Thus we 
see how it is that in the end pure idealism is 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 3 1 

ideal peoples are the most completely ma- 
identical with pure materialism, and the most 
terial. Ideal and material are identical. The 
ideal is but the god in the machine — the little, 
fixed, machine principle which works the hu- 
man psyche automatically. 

We are now in the last stages of idealism. 
And psychoanalysis alone has the courage 
necessary to conduct us through these last 
stages. The identity of love with sex, the 
single necessity for fulfilment through love, 
these are our fixed ideals. We must fulfil these 
ideals in their extremity. And this brings us 
finally to incest, even incest-worship. We 
have no option, whilst our ideals stand. 

Why? Because incest is the logical con- 
clusion of our ideals, when these ideals have 
to be carried into passional effect. And ideal- 
ism has no escape from logic. And once he 
has built himself in the shape of any ideal, 



32 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

man will go to any logical length rather than 
abandon his ideal corpus. Nay, some great 
cataclysm has to throw him down and destroy 
the whole fabric of his life before the motor- 
principle of his dominant ideal is destroyed. 
Hence psychoanalysis as the advance-guard of 
science, the evangel of the last ideal liberty. 
For of course there is a great fascination in a 
completely effected idealism. Man is then 
undisputed master of his own fate, and captain 
of his own soul. But better say engine-driver, 
for in truth he is no more than the little god 
in the machine, this master of fate. He has 
invented his own automatic principles, and he 
works himself according to them, like any 
little mechanic inside the works. 

But ideal or not, we are all of us between 
the pit and the pendulum, or the walls of red- 
hot metal, as may be. If we refuse the 
Freudian pis-aller as a means of escape, we 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 33 

have still to find some way out. For there we 
are, all of us, trapped in a corner where we 
cannot, and simply do not know how to fulfil 
our own natures, passionally. We don't know 
in which way fulfilment lies. If psychoana- 
lysis discovers incest, small blame to it. 

Yet we do know this much : that the pushing 
of the ideal to any further lengths will not 
avail us anything. We have actually to go 
back to our own unconscious. But not to the 
unconscious which is the inverted reflection of 
our ideal consciousness. We must discover, 
if we can, the true unconscious, where our life 
bubbles up in us, prior to any mentality. The 
first bubbling life in us, which is innocent of 
any mental alteration, this is the unconscious. 
It is pristine, not in any way ideal. It is the 
spontaneous origin from which it behooves us 
to live. 

What then is the true unconscious? It is 



34 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

not a shadow cast from the mind. It is the 
spontaneous life-motive in every organism. 
Where does it begin? It begins where life 
begins. But that is too vague. It is no use 
talking about life and the unconscious in bulk. 
You can talk about electricity, because elec- 
tricity is a homogeneous force, conceivable 
apart from any incorporation. But life is in- 
conceivable as a general thing. It exists only 
in living creatures. So that life begins, now 
as always, in an individual living creature. In 
the beginning of the individual living creature 
is the beginning of life, every time and always, 
and life has no beginning apart from this. 
Any attempt at a further generalization takes 
us merely beyond the consideration of life into 
the region of mechanical homogeneous force. 
This is shown in the cosmologies of eastern re- 
ligions. 

The beginning of life is in the beginning of 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 35 

the first individual creature. You may call 
the naked, unicellular bit of plasm the first 
individual, if you like. Mentally, as far as 
thinkable simplicity goes, it is the first. So 
that we may say that life begins in the first 
naked unicellular organism. And where life 
begins the unconscious also begins. But mark, 
the first naked unicellular organism is an indi- 
vidual. It is a specific individual, not a math- 
ematical unit, like a unit of force. 

Where the individual begins, life begins. 
The two are inseparable, life and individu- 
ality. And also, where the individual begins, 
the unconscious, which is the specific life-mo- 
tive, also begins. We are trying to trace the 
unconscious to its source. And we find that 
this source, in all the higher organisms, is the 
first ovule cell from which an individual or- 
ganism arises. At the moment of conception, 
when a procreative male nucleus fuses with 



36 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

the nucleus of the female germ, at that mo- 
ment does a new unit of life, of consciousness, 
arise in the universe. Is it not obvious? The 
unconscious has no other source than this, this 
first fused nucleus of the ovule. 

Useless to talk about the unconscious as if 
it were a homogeneous force like electricity. 
You can only deal with the unconscious when 
you realize that in every individual organism 
an individual nature, an individual conscious- 
ness, is spontaneously created at the moment 
of conception. We say created. And by 
created we mean spontaneously appearing in 
the universe, out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil 
fit. It is true that an individual is also gen- 
erated. By the fusion of two nuclei, male and 
female, we understand the process of genera- 
tion. And from the process of generation we 
may justly look for a new unit, according to 
the law of cause and effect. As a natural or 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 37 

automatic result of the process of generation 
we may look for a new unit of existence. But 
the nature of this new unit must derive from 
the natures of the parents, also by law. And 
this we deny. We deny that the nature of any 
new creature derives from the natures of its 
parents. The nature of the infant does not 
follow from the natures of its parents. The 
nature of the infant is not just a new permuta- 
tion-and-combination of elements contained 
in the natures of the parents. There is in the 
nature of the infant that which is utterly un- 
known in the natures of the parents, something 
which could never be derived from the natures 
of all the existent individuals or previous in- 
dividuals. There is in the nature of the infant 
something entirely new, underived, underiv- 
able, something which is, and which will for- 
ever remain, causeless. And this something 
is the unanalyzable, indefinable reality of in- 



38 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

dividuality. Every time at the moment of 
conception of every higher organism an indi- 
vidual nature incomprehensibly arises in the 
universe, out of nowhere. Granted the whole 
cause-and-eflect process of generation and 
evolution, still the individual is not explained. 
The individual unit of consciousness and be- 
ing which arises at the conception of every 
higher organism arises by pure creation, by a 
process not susceptible to understanding, a 
process which takes place outside the field of 
mental comprehension, where mentality, 
which is definitely limited, cannot and does 
not exist. 

This causeless created nature of the indi- 
vidual being is the same as the old mystery of 
the divine nature of the soul. Religion was 
right and science is wrong. Every individual 
creature has a soul, a specific individual na- 
ture the origin of which cannot be found 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 39 

in any cause-and-effect process whatever. 
Cause-and-effect will not explain even the 
individuality of a single dandelion. There is 
no assignable cause, and no logical reason, for 
individuality. On the contrary, individuality 
appears in defiance of all scientific law, in de- 
fiance even of reason. 

Having established so much, we can really 
approach the unconscious. By the uncon- 
scious we wish to indicate that essential unique 
nature of every individual creature, which is, 
by its very nature, unanalyzable, undefinable, 
inconceivable. It cannot be conceived, it can 
only be experienced, in every single instance. 
And being inconceivable, we will call it the 
unconscious. As a matter of fact, soul would 
be a better word. By the unconscious we do 
mean the soul. But the word soul has been 
vitiated by the idealistic use, until nowadays 
it means only that which a man conceives him- 



40 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

self to be. And that which a man conceives 
himself to be is something far different from 
his true unconscious. So we must relinquish 
the ideal word soul. 

If, however, the unconscious is inconceiv- 
able, how do we know it at all? We know it 
by direct experience. All the best part of 
knowledge is inconceivable. We know the 
sun. But we cannot conceive the sun, unless 
we are willing to accept some theory of burn- 
ing gases, some cause-and-effect nonsense. And 
even if we do have a mental conception of the 
sun as a sphere of blazing gas — which it cer- 
tainly isn't — we are just as far from knowing 
what blaze is. Knowledge is always a matter 
of whole experience, what St. Paul calls know- 
ing in full, and never a matter of mental con- 
ception merely. This is indeed the point of 
all full knowledge: that it is contained mainly 
within the unconscious, its mental or conscious 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 4 1 

reference being only a sort of extract or 
shadow. 

It is necessary for us to know the uncon- 
scious, or we cannot live, just as it is necessary 
for us to know the sun. But we need not ex- 
plain the unconscious, any more than we need 
explain the sun. We can't do either, anyway. 
We know the sun by beholding him and watch- 
ing his motions and feeling his changing 
power. The same with the unconscious. We 
watch it in all its manifestations, its unfolding 
incarnations. We watch it in all its processes 
and its unaccountable evolutions, and these we 
register. 

For though the unconscious is the creative 
element, and though, like the soul, it is beyond 
all law of cause and effect in its totality, yet 
in its processes of self-realization it follows 
the laws of cause and effect. The processes of 
cause and effect are indeed part of the work- 



42 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

ing out of this incomprehensible self-realiza- 
tion of the individual unconscious. The great 
laws of the universe are no more than the fixed 
habits of the living unconscious. 

What we must needs do is to try to trace 
still further the habits of the true unconscious, 
and by mental recognition of these habits 
break the limits which we have imposed on 
the movement of the unconscious. For the 
whole point about the true unconscious is that 
it is all the time moving forward, beyond the 
range of its own fixed laws or habits. It is no 
good trying to superimpose an ideal nature up- 
on the unconscious. We have to try to recog- 
nize the true nature and then leave the uncon- 
scious itself to prompt new movement and new 
being — the creative progress. 

What we are suffering from now is the re- 
striction of the unconscious within certain 
ideal limits. The more we force the ideal the 



THE INCEST MOTIVE AND IDEALISM 43 

more we rupture the true movement. Once 
we can admit the known, but incomprehen- 
sible, presence of the integral unconscious; 
once we can trace it home in ourselves and 
follow its first revealed movements; once we 
know how it habitually unfolds itself; once we 
can scientifically determine its laws and proc- 
esses in ourselves : then at last we can begin to 
live from the spontaneous initial prompting, 
instead of from the dead machine-principles 
of ideas and ideals. There is a whole science 
of the creative unconscious, the unconscious in 
its law-abiding activities. And of this science 
we do not even know the first term. Yes, when 
we know that the unconscious appears by crea- 
tion, as a new individual reality in every 
newly-fertilized germ-cell, then we know the 
very first item of the new science. But it 
needs a super-scientific grace before we can 
admit this first new item of knowledge. It 



44 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

means that science abandons its intellectualist 
position and embraces the old religious fac- 
ulty. But it does not thereby become less sci- 
entific, it only becomes at last complete in 
knowledge. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

It IS useless to try to determine what is 
consciousness or what is knowledge. Who 
cares anyhow, since we know without defini- 
tions. But what we fail to know, yet what we 
must know, is the nature of the pristine con- 
sciousness which lies integral and progressive 
within every functioning organism. The brain 
is the seat of the ideal consciousness. And 
ideal consciousness is only the dead end of 
consciousness, the spun silk. The vast bulk of 
consciousness is non-cerebral. It is the sap 
of our life, of all life. 

We are forced to attribute to a star-fish, or 
to a nettle, its own peculiar and integral con- 

45 



46 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

sciousness. This throws us at once out of the 
ideal castle of the brain into the flux of sap- 
consciousness. But let us not jump too far in 
one bound. Let us refrain from taking a sheer 
leap down the abyss of consciousness, down 
to the invertebrates and the protococci. Let 
us cautiously scramble down the human de- 
clivities. Or rather let us try to start some- 
where near the foot of the calvary of human 
consciousness. Let us consider the child in 
the womb. Is the foetus conscious? It must 
be, since it carries on an independent and 
progressive self-development. This conscious- 
ness obviously cannot be ideal, cannot be cere- 
bral, since it precedes any vestige of cerebra- 
tion. And yet it is an integral, individual con- 
sciousness, having its own single purpose and 
progression. Where can it be centered, how 
can it operate, before even nerves are formed? 
For it does steadily and persistently operate, 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 47 

even spinning the nerves and brain as a web 
for its own motion, like some subtle spider. 

What is the spinning spider of the first hu- 
man consciousness — or rather, where is the 
center at which this consciousness lies and 
spins? Since there must be a center of con- 
sciousness in the tiny foetus, it must have been 
there from the very beginning. There it must 
have been, in the first fused nucleus of the 
ovule. And if we could but watch this prime 
nucleus, we should no doubt realize that 
throughout all the long and incalculable his- 
tory of the individual it still remains central 
and prime, the source and clue of the living 
unconscious, the origin. As in the first mo- 
ment of conception, so to the end of life in the 
individual, the first nucleus remains the crea- 
tive-productive center, the quick, both of con- 
sciousness and of organic development. 

And where in the developed foetus shall we 



48 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

look for this creative-productive quick? Shall 
we expect it in the brain or in the heart? 
Surely our own subjective wisdom tells us, 
what science can verify, that it lies beneath 
the navel of the folded foetus. Surely that 
prime center, which is the very first nucleus 
of the fertilized ovule, lies situated beneath 
the navel of all womb-born creatures. There, 
from the beginning, it lay in its mysterious re- 
lation to the outer, active universe. There it 
lay, perfectly associated with the parent body. 
There it acted on its own peculiar indepen- 
dence, drawing the whole stream of creative 
blood upon itself, and, spinning within the 
parental blood-stream, slowly creating or 
bodying forth its own incarnate amplification. 
All the time between the quick of life in the 
foetus and the great outer universe there ex- 
ists a perfect correspondence, upon which cor- 
respondence the astrologers based their sci- 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 49 

ence in the days before mental consciousness 
had arrogated all knowledge unto itself. 

The foetus is not personally conscious. But 
then what is personality if not ideal in its 
origin? The foetus is, however, radically, in- 
dividually conscious. From the active quick, 
the nuclear center, it remains single and in- 
tegral in its activity. At this center it dis- 
tinguishes itself utterly from the surrounding 
universe, whereby both are modified. From 
this center the whole individual arises, and 
upon this center the whole universe, by impli- 
cation, impinges. For the fixed and stable 
universe of law and matter, even the whole 
cosmos, would wear out and disintegrate if 
it did not rest and find renewal in the 
quick center of creative life in individual 
creatures. 

And since this center has absolute location 
in the first fertilized nucleus, it must have 



50 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

location still in the developed foetus, and in 
the mature man. And where is this location 
in the unborn infant? Beneath the burning 
influx of the navel. Where is it in the adult 
man? Still beneath the navel. As primal 
affective center it lies within the solar plexus 
of the nervous system. 

We do not pretend to use technical lan- 
guage. But surely our meaning is plain even 
to correct scientists, when we assert that in all 
mammals the center of primal, constructive 
consciousness and activity lies in the middle 
front of the abdomen, beneath the navel, in 
the great nerve center called the solar plexus. 
How do we know? We feel it, as we feel 
hunger or love or hate. Once we know what 
we are, science can proceed to analyze our 
knowledge, demonstrate its truth or its un- 
truth. 

We all of us know what it is to handle a new- 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 5 1 

born, or at least a quite young infant. We 
know what it is to lay the hand on the round 
little abdomen, the round, pulpy little head. 
We know where is life, where is pulp. We 
have seen blind puppies, blind kittens crawl- 
ing. They give strange little cries. Whence 
these cries? Are they mental exclamations? 
As in a ventriloquist, they come from the 
stomach. There lies the wakeful center. 
There speaks the first consciousness, the aud- 
ible unconscious, in the squeak of these in- 
fantile things, which is so curiously and inde- 
scribably moving, reacting direct upon the 
great abdominal center, the preconscious mind 
in man. 

There at the navel, the first rupture has 
taken place, the first break in continuity. 
There is the scar of dehiscence, scar at once 
of our pain and splendor of individuality. 
Here is the mark of our isolation in the uni- 



52 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

verse, stigma and seal of our free, perfect 
singleness. Hence the lotus of the navel. 
Hence the mystic contemplation of the navel. 
It is the upper mind losing itself in the lower 
first-mind, that which is last in consciousness 
reverting to that which is first. 

A mother will realize better than a phil- 
osopher. She knows the rupture which has 
finally separated her child into its own single, 
free existence. She knows the strange, sensi- 
tive rose of the navel : how it quivers con- 
scious; all its pain, its want for the old con- 
nection; all its joy and chuckling exultation 
in sheer organic singleness and individual lib- 
erty. 

The powerful, active psychic center in a new 
child is the great solar plexus of the sym- 
pathetic system. From this center the child 
is drawn to the mother again, crying, to heal 
the new wound, to re-establish the old oneness. 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 53 

This center directs the little mouth which, 
blind and anticipatory, seeks the breast. How 
could it find the breast, blind and mindless 
little mouth? But it needs no eyes nor mind. 
From the great first-mind of the abdomen it 
moves direct, with an anterior knowledge al- 
most like magnetic propulsion, as if the little 
mouth were drawn or propelled to the mater- 
nal breast by vital magnetism, whose center of 
directive control lies in the solar plexus. 

In a measure, this taking of the breast re- 
instates the old connection with the parent 
body. It is a strange sinking back to the old 
unison, the old organic continuum — a recov- 
ery of the pre-natal state. But at the same 
time it is a deep, avid gratification in drinking- 
in the sustenance of a new individuality. It 
is a deep gratification in the exertion of a new, 
voluntary power. The child acts now sepa- 
rately from its own individual center and ex- 



54 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

erts still a control over the adjacent universe, 
the parent body. 

So the warm life-stream passes again from 
the parent into the aching abdomen of the 
severed child. Life cannot progress without 
these ruptures, severances, cataclysms; pain is 
a living reality, not merely a deathly. Why 
haven't we the courage for life-pains? If we 
could depart from our old tenets of the mind, 
if we could fathom our own unconscious sapi- 
ence, we should find we have courage and to 
spare. We are too mentally domesticated. 

The great magnetic or dynamic center of 
first-consciousness acts powerfully at the solar 
plexus. Here the child knows beyond all 
knowledge. It does not see with the eyes, it 
cannot perceive, much less conceive. Nothing 
can it apprehend; the eyes are a strange plas- 
mic, nascent darkness. Yet from the belly it 
knows, with a directness of knowledge that 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 55 

frightens us and may even seem abhorrent. 
The mother, also, from the bowels knows her 
child — as she can never, never know it from 
the head. There is no thought nor speech, 
only direct, ventral gurglings and cooings. 
From the passional nerve-center of the solar 
plexus in the mother passes direct, unspeak- 
able effluence and intercommunication, sheer 
effluent contact with the palpitating nerve- 
center in the belly of the child. Knowledge, 
unspeakable knowledge interchanged, which 
must be diluted by eternities of materializa- 
tion before they can come to expression. 

It is like a lovely, suave, fluid, creative elec- 
tricity that flows in a circuit between the great 
nerve-centers in mother and child. The elec- 
tricity of the universe is a sundering force. 
But this lovely polarized vitalism is creative. 
It passes in a circuit between the two poles of 
the passional unconscious in the two now sepa- 



56 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

rated beings. It establishes in each that first 
primal consciousness which is the sacred, all- 
containing head-stream of all our conscious- 
ness. 

But this is not all. The flux between mother 
and child is not all sweet unison. There is 
as well the continually widening gap. A won- 
derful rich communion, and at the same time 
a continually increasing cleavage. If only we 
could realize that all through life these are the 
two synchronizing activities of love, of crea- 
tivity. For the end, the goal, is the perfecting 
of each single individuality, unique in itself — 
which cannot take place without a perfected 
harmony between the beloved, a harmony 
which depends on the at-last-clarified single- 
ness of each being, a singleness equilibrized, 
polarized in one by the counter-posing single- 
ness of the other. 

So the child. In its wonderful unison with 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 57 

the mother it is at the same time extricating 
itself into single, separate, independent ex- 
istence. The one process, of unison, cannot 
go on without the other process, of purified 
severance. At first the child cleaves back to 
the old source. It clings and adheres. The 
sympathetic center of unification, or at least 
unison, alone seems awake. The child wails 
with the strange desolation of severance, wails 
for the old connection. With joy and peace 
it returns to the breast, almost as to the womb. 
But not quite. Even in sucking it discovers 
its new identity and power. Its own new, 
separate power. It draws itself back sud- 
denly; it waits. It has heard something? No. 
But another center has flashed awake. The 
child stiffens itself and holds back. What is 
it, wind? Stomach-ache? Not at all. Listen 
to some of the screams. The ears can hear 
deeper than eyes can see. The first scream of 



58 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

the ego. The scream of asserted isolation. 
The scream of revolt from connection, the re- 
volt from union. There is a violent anti- 
maternal motion, anti-everything. There is a 
refractory, bad-tempered negation of every- 
thing, a hurricane of temper. What then? 
After such tremendous unison as the womb 
implies, no wonder there are storms of rage 
and separation. The child is screaming itself 
rid of the old womb, kicking itself in a blind 
paroxysm into freedom, into separate, negative 
independence. 

So be it, there must be paroxysms, since 
there must be independence. Then the mother 
gets angry too. It affects her, though perhaps 
not as badly as it affects outsiders. Nothing 
acts more direct on the great primal nerve- 
centers than the screaming of an infant, this 
blind screaming negation of connections. It 
is the friction of irritation itself. Everybody is 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 59 

implicated, just as they would be if the air 
were surcharged with electricity. The mother 
is perhaps less affected because she under- 
stands primarily, or because she is polarized 
directly with the child. Yet she, too, must be 
angry, in her measure, inevitably. 

It is a blind, almost mechanistic effort on 
the part of the new organism to extricate itself 
from cohesion with the circumambient uni- 
verse. It applies direct to the mother. But 
it affects everybody. The great centers of re- 
sponse vibrate with a maddening, sometimes 
unbearable friction. What centers? Not the 
great sympathetic plexus this time, but its cor- 
responding voluntary ganglion. The v great 
ganglion of the spinal system, the lumbar 
ganglion, negatively polarizes the solar plexus 
in the primal psychic activity of a human in- 
dividual. When a child screams with temper, 
it sends out from the lumbar ganglion violent 



60 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

waves of frictional repudiation, extraordi- 
nary. The little back has an amazing power 
once it stiffens itself. In the lumbar ganglion 
the unconscious now vibrates tremendously in 
the activity of sundering, separation. Mother 
and child, polarized, are primarily affected. 
Often the mother is so sure of her possession 
of the child that she is almost unmoved. But 
the child continues, till the frictional response 
is roused in the mother, her anger rises, there 
is a flash, an outburst like lightning. And 
then the storm subsides. The pure act of sun- 
dering is effected. Each being is clarified fur- 
ther into its own single, individual self, fur- 
ther perfected, separated. 

Hence a duality, now, in primal conscious- 
ness in the infant. The warm rosy abdomen, 
tender with chuckling unison, and the little 
back strengthening itself. The child kicks 
away, into independence. It stiffens its spine 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 61 

in the strength of its own private and separate, 
inviolable existence. It will admit now of no 
trespass. It is awake now in a new pride, a 
new self-assertion. The sense of antagonistic 
freedom is aroused. Clumsy old adhesions 
must be ruthlessly fused. And so, from the 
lumbar ganglion the fiery-tempered infant as- 
serts its new, blind will. 

And as the child fights the mother fights. 
Sometimes she fights to keep her refractory 
child, and sometimes she fights to kick him off, 
as a mare kicks off her too-babyish foal. It is 
the great voluntary center of the unconscious 
flashing into action. Flashing from the deep 
lumbar ganglion in the mother to the newly- 
awakened, corresponding center in the child 
goes the swift negative current, setting each 
of them asunder in clean individuality. So 
long as the force meets its polarized response 
all is well. When a force flashes and has no 



62 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

response, there is devastation. How weary in 
the back is the nursing mother whose great 
center of repudiation is suppressed or weak; 
how a child droops if only the sympathetic 
unison is established. 

So, the polarity of the dynamic conscious- 
ness, from the very start of life! Direct flow- 
ing and flashing of two consciousness-streams, 
active in the bringing forth of an individual 
being. The sweet commingling, the sharp 
clash of opposition. And no possibility of 
creative development without this polarity, 
this dual circuit of direct, spontaneous, honest 
interchange. No hope of life apart from this. 
The primal unconscious pulsing in its circuits 
between two beings : love and wrath, cleaving 
and repulsion, inglutination and excrementa- 
tion. What is the good of inventing "ideal" 
behavior? How order the path of the uncon- 
scious? For let us now realize that we cannot, 



THE BIRTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS 63 

even with the best intentions, proceed to order 
the path of our own unconscious without 
vitally deranging the life-flow of those con- 
nected with us. If you disturb the current at 
one pole, it must be disturbed at the other. 
Here is a new moral aspect to life. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 

IN ASSERTING that the seat of consciousness 
in a young infant is in the abdomen, we do 
not pretend to suggest that all the other con- 
scious-centers are utterly dormant. Once a 
child is born, the whole nervous and cerebral 
system comes awake, even the brain's memo- 
ries begin to glimmer, recognition and cogni- 
tion soon begin to take place. But the spon- 
taneous control and all the prime developing 
activity derive from the great affective centers 
of the abdomen. In the solar plexus is the 
first great fountain and issue of infantile con- 
sciousness. There, beneath the navel, lies the 
active human first-mind, the prime uncon- 
scious. From the moment of conception, when 

6 4 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 65 

the first nucleus is formed, to the moment of 
death, when this same nucleus breaks again, 
the first great active center of human con- 
sciousness lies in the solar plexus. 

The movement of development in any crea- 
ture is, however, towards a florescent indi- 
viduality. The ample, mature, unfolded indi- 
vidual stands perfect, perfect in himself, but 
also perfect in his harmonious relation to those 
nearest him and to all the universe. Whilst 
only the one great center of consciousness is 
awake, in the abdomen, the infant has no sepa- 
rate existence, his whole nature is contained 
in the conjunction with the parent. As soon 
as the complementary negative pole arouses 
the voluntary center of the lumbar ganglion, 
there is at once a retraction into independence 
and an assertion of singleness. The back 
strengthens itself. 

But still the circuit of polarity, dual as it 



66 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

is, positive and negative from the positive- 
sympathetic and the negative-voluntary poles, 
still depends on the duality of two beings — it 
is still extra-individual. Each individual is 
vitally dependent on the other, for the life 
circuit. 

Let us consider for a moment the kind of 
consciousness manifested at the two great pri- 
mary centers. At the solar plexus the new 
psyche acts in a mode of attractive vitalism, 
drawing its objective unto itself as by vital 
magnetism. Here it drinks in, as it were, the 
contiguous universe, as during the womb- 
period it drank from the living continuum of 
the mother. It is darkly self-centered, ex- 
ultant and positive in its own existence. It is 
all-in-all to itself, its own great subject. It 
knows no objective. It only knows its own 
vital potency, which potency draws the ex- 
ternal object unto itself, subjectively, as the 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 67 

blood-stream was drawn into the foetus, by 
subjective attraction. Here the psyche is to 
itself the All. Blindly self-positive. 

This is the first mode of consciousness for 
every living thing — fascinating in all young 
things. The second half of the same mode 
commences as soon as direct activity sets up 
in the lumbar ganglion. Then the psyche re- 
coils upon itself, in its first reaction against 
continuity with the outer universe. It recoils 
even against its own mode of assimilatory uni- 
son. Even it must break off, interrupt the 
great psychic-assimilation process which goes 
on at the sympathic center. It must recoil 
clean upon itself, break loose f rom.any attach- 
ment whatsoever. And then it must try its 
power, often playfully. 

This reaction is still subjective. When a 
child stiffens and draws away, when it screams 
with pure temper, it takes no note of that 



68 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

from which it recoils. It has no objective 
consciousness of that from which it reacts, the 
mother principally. It is like a swimmer end- 
lessly kicking the water away behind him, 
with strong legs vividly active from the spinal 
ganglia. Like a man in a boat pushing off 
from the shore, it merely thrusts away, in 
order to ride free, ever more free. It is a 
purely subjective motion, in the negative di- 
rection. 

After our long training in objectivation, 
and our epoch of worship of the objective 
mode, it is perhaps difficult for us to realize 
the strong, blind power of the unconscious on 
its first plane of activity. It is something quite 
different from what we call egoism — which is 
really mentally derived — for the ego is merely 
the sum-total of what we conceive ourselves 
to be. The powerful pristine subjectivity of 
the unconscious on its first plane is, on the 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 69 

other hand, the root of all our consciousness 
and being, darkly tenacious. Here we are 
grounded, say what we may. And if we break 
the spell of this first subjective mode, we break 
our own main root and live rootless, shiftless, 
groundless. 

So that the powerful subjectivity of the un- 
conscious, where the self is all-in-all unto it- 
self, active in strong desirous psychic assimila- 
tion or in direct repudiation of the contiguous 
universe; this first plane of psychic activity, 
polarized in the solar plexus and the lumbar 
ganglion of each individual but established in 
a circuit with the corresponding poles of an- 
other individual: this is the first scope of life 
and being for every human individual, and is 
beyond question. But we must again remark 
that the whole circuit is established between 
two individuals — that neither is a free thing- 
unto-itself — and that the very fact of estab- 



70 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

lished polarity between the two maintains that 
correspondence between the individual entity 
and the external universe which is the clue to 
all growth and development. The pure sub- 
jectivity of the first plane of consciousness is 
no more selfish than the pure objectivity of 
any other plane. How can it be? How can 
any form of pure, balanced polarity between 
two vital individuals be in any sense selfish on 
the part of one individual? We have got our 
moral values all wrong. 

Save for healthy instinct, the moralistic hu- 
man race would have exterminated itself long 
ago. And yet man must be moral, at the very 
root moral. The essence of morality is the 
basic desire to preserve the perfect correspond- 
ence between the self and the object, to have 
no trespass and no breach of integrity, nor yet 
any ref aulture in the vitalistic interchange. 

As yet we see the unconscious active on one 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 71 

plane only and entirely dependent on two in- 
dividuals. But immediately following the 
establishment of the circuit of the powerful, 
subjective, abdominal plane comes the quiver- 
ing of the whole system into a new degree of 
consciousness. And two great upper centers 
are awake. 

The diaphragm really divides the human 
body, psychically as well as organically. The 
two centers beneath the diaphragm are centers 
of dark subjectivity, centripetal, assimilative. 
Once these are established, in the thorax the 
two first centers of objective consciousness be- 
come active, with ever-increasing intensity. 
The great thoracic sympathetic plexus rouses 
like a sun in the breast, the thoracic ganglion 
fills the shoulders with strength. There are 
now two planes of primary consciousness — the 
first, the lower, the subjective unconscious, ac- 
tive beneath the diaphragm, and the second 



72 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

upper, objective plane, active above the dia- 
phragm, in the breast. 

Let us realize that the subjective ana ob- 
jective of the unconscious are not the same as 
the subjective and the objective of the mind. 
Here we have no concepts to deal with, no 
static objects in the shape of ideas. We have 
none of that tiresome business of establishing 
the relation between the mind and its own 
ideal object, or the discriminating between 
the ideal thing-in-itself and the mind of which 
it is the content. We are spared that hateful 
thing-in-itself, the idea, which is at once so 
all-important and so nothing. We are on 
straightforward solid ground; there is no ab- 
straction. 

The unconscious subjectivity is, in its posi- 
tive manifestation, a great imbibing, and in its 
negative, a definite blind rejection. What we 
call an unconscious rejection. This subjec- 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 73 

tivity embraces alike creative emotion and 
physical function. It includes alike the sweet 
and untellable communion of love between the 
mother and child, the irrational reaction into 
separation between the two, and also the phys- 
ical functioning of sucking and urination. 
Psychic and physical development run par- 
allel, though they are forever distinct. The 
child sucking, the child urinating, this is the 
child acting from the great subjective centers, 
positive and negative. When the child sucks, 
there is a sympathetic circuit between it and 
the mother, in which the sympathetic plexus 
in the mother acts as negative or submissive 
pole to the corresponding plexus in the child. 
In urination there is a corresponding circuit 
in the voluntary centers, so that a mother seems 
gratified, and is gratified, inevitably, by the 
excremental functioning of her child. She 
experiences a true polar reaction. 



74 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

Child and mother have, in the first place, no 
objective consciousness of each other, and cer- 
tainly no idea of each other. Each is a blind 
desideratum to the other. The strong love 
between them is effectual in the great ab- 
dominal centers, where all love, real love, is 
primarily based. Of that reflected or moon- 
love, derived from the head, that spurious 
form of love which predominates to-day, we 
do not speak here. It has its root in the idea: 
the beloved is a mental objective, endlessly ap- 
preciated, criticized, scrutinized, exhausted. 
This has nothing to do with the active uncon- 
scious. 

Having realized that the unconscious 
sparkles, vibrates, travels in a strong subjec- 
tive stream from the abdominal centers, con- 
necting the child directly with the mother at 
corresponding poles of vitalism, we realize 
that the unconscious contains nothing ideal, 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 75 

nothing in the least conceptual, and hence 
nothing in the least personal, since personality, 
like the ego, belongs to the conscious or men- 
tal-subjective self. So the first analyses are, 
or should be, so impersonal that the so-called 
human relations are not involved. The first 
relationship is neither personal nor biological 
— a fact which psychoanalysis has not suc- 
ceeded in grasping. 

For example. A child screams with terror 
at the touch of fur; another child loves the 
touch of fur, and purrs with pleasure. How 
now? Is it a complex? Did the father have 
a beard? 

It is possible. But all-too-human. The 
physical result of rubbing fur is to set up a 
certain amount of f rictional electricity. Fric- 
tional electricity is one of the sundering 
forces. It corresponds to the voluntary forces 
exerted at the lower spinal ganglia, the forces 



76 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

of anger and retraction into independence and 
power. An over-sympathetic child will 
scream with fear at the touch of fur; a re- 
fractory child will purr with pleasure. It is 
a reaction which involves even deeper things 
than sex — the primal constitution of the ele- 
mentary psyche. A sympathetically overbal- 
anced child has a horror of the electric-fric- 
tional force such as is emitted from the fur of 
a black cat, creature of rapacity. The same 
delights a fierce-willed child. 

But we must admit at the same time that 
from earliest days a child is subject to the 
definite conscious psychic influences of its sur- 
roundings and will react almost automatically 
to a conscious-passional suggestion from the 
mother. In this way personal sex is prema- 
turely evoked, and real complexes are set up. 
But these derive not from the spontaneous un- 
conscious. They are in a way dictated from 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 77 

the deliberate, mental consciousness, even if 
involuntarily. Again they are a result of 
mental subjectivity, self-consciousness — so dif- 
ferent from the primal subjectivity of the un- 
conscious. 

To return, however, to the pure uncon- 
scious, When the upper centers flash awake, 
a whole new field of consciousness and spon- 
taneous activity is opened out. The great 
sympathetic plexus of the breast is the heart's 
mind. This thoracic plexus corresponds di- 
rectly in the upper man to the solar plexus 
in the lower. But it is a correspondence in 
creative opposition. From the sympathetic 
center of the breast as from a window the un- 
conscious goes forth seeking its object, to dwell 
upon it. When a child leans its breast against 
its mother it becomes filled with a primal 
awareness of her — not of itself desiring her or 
partaking of her — but of her as she is in her- 



78 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

self. This is the first great acquisition of 
primal objective knowledge, the objective con- 
tent of the unconscious. Such knowledge we 
call the treasure of the heart. When the an- 
cients located the first seat of consciousness 
in the heart, they were neither misguided nor 
playing with metaphor. For by consciousness 
they meant, as usual, objective consciousness 
only. And from the cardiac plexus goes forth 
that strange effluence of the self which seeks 
and dwells upon the beloved, lovingly roving 
like the fingers of an infant or a blind man 
over the face of the treasured object, gathering 
her mould into itself and transferring her 
mould forever into its own deep unconscious 
psyche. This is the first acquiring of objective 
knowledge, sightless, unspeakably direct. It 
is a dwelling of the child's unconscious within 
the form of the mother, the gathering of a 
pure, eternal impression. So the soul stores 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 79 

itself with dynamic treasures; it verily builds 
its own tissue of such treasure, the tissue of the 
developing body, each cell stored with crea- 
tive dynamic content. 

The breasts themselves are as two eyes. We 
do not know how much the nipples of the 
breast, both in man and woman, serve pri- 
marily as poles of vital conscious effluence and 
connection. We do not know how the nipples 
of the breast are as fountains leaping into the 
universe, or as little lamps irradiating the con- 
tiguous world, to the soul in quest. 

But certainly from the passional conscious- 
center of the breast goes forth the first joyous 
discovery of the beloved, the first objective 
discovery of the contiguous universe, the first 
ministration of the self to that which is beyond 
the self. So, functionally, the mother min- 
isters with the milk of her breast. But this is 
a yielding to the great lower plexus, the basic 



80 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

solar plexus. It is the breast as part also of 
the alimentary system — a special thing. 

In sucking the hands also come awake. It 
is strange to notice the pictures by the old 
masters of the Madonna and Child. Some- 
times the strange round belly of the Infant 
seems the predominant mystery-center, and 
sometimes from the tiny breast it is as if a deli- 
cate light glowed, the light of love. As if the 
breast should illumine the outer world in its 
seeking administering love. As if the breast 
of the Infant glimmered its light of discovery 
on the adoring Mother, and she bowed, sub- 
missive to the revelation. 

The little hands and arms wave, circulate, 
trying to touch, to grasp, to know. To grasp 
in caress, not to reive. To grasp in order to 
identify themselves with the cherished discov- 
ery, to realize the beloved. To cherish, to 
realize the beloved. To administer the out- 



THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER 8 1 

ward-seeking self to the beloved. We give 
this the exclusive name of love. But it is in- 
deed only the one direction of love, the out- 
going from the lovely center of the breast — 
the nipple seeking, the hands delicately, 
caressively exploring, the eyes at last waking 
to perception. The eyes, the hands, these wake 
and are alert from the center of the breast. 
But the ears and feet move from the deep 
lower centers — the recipient ears, imbibing vi- 
brations, the feet which press the resistant 
earth, controlled from the powerful lower 
ganglia of the spine. And thus great scope 
of activity opens, in the hands that wave and 
explore, the eyes that try to perceive, the legs, 
the little knees that thrust, thrust away, the 
small feet that curl and twinkle upon them- 
selves, ready for the obstinate earth. 

And so, also a wholeness is established with- 
in the individual. The two fields of conscious- 



82 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

ness, the first upper and the first lower, are 
based upon a correspondence of polarity. The 
first great complex circuit is now set up within 
the individual, between the upper and lower 
centers. The individual consciousness has 
now its own integral independent existence 
and activity, apart from external connection. 
It has its right to be alone. 



CHAPTER V 

THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 

Consciousness develops on successive 
planes. On each plane there is the dual 
polarity, positive and negative, of the sym- 
pathetic and voluntary nerve centers. The 
first plane is established between the poles of 
the sympathetic solar plexus and the volun- 
tary lumbar ganglion. This is the active first 
plane of the subjective unconscious, from 
which the whole of consciousness arises. 

Immediately succeeding the first plane of 
subjective dynamic consciousness arises the 
corresponding first plane of objective con- 
sciousness, the objective unconscious, polarized 
in the cardiac plexus and the thoracic gan- 
glion, in the breast. There is a perfect cor- 

83 



84 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

respondence in difference between the first 
abdominal and the first thoracic planes. These 
two planes polarize each other in a fourfold 
polarity, which makes the first great field of 
individual, self-dependent consciousness. 

Each pole of the active unconscious mani- 
fests a specific activity and gives rise to a 
specific kind of dynamic or creative conscious- 
ness. On each plane, the negative voluntary 
pole complements the positive sympathetic 
pole, and yet the consciousness originating 
from the complementary poles is not merely 
negative versus positive, it is categorically dif- 
ferent, opposite. Each is pure and perfect in 
itself. 

But the moment we enter the two planes of 
corresponding consciousness, lower and upper, 
we find a whole new range of complements. 
The upper, dynamic-objective plane is com- 
plementary to the lower, dynamic-subjective. 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 85 

The mystery of creative opposition exists all 
the time between the two planes, and this uni- 
son in opposition between the two planes 
forms the first whole field of consciousness. 
Within the individual the polarity is fourfold. 
In a relation between two individuals the po- 
larity is already eightfold. 

Now before we can have any sort of scien- 
tific, comprehensive psychology we shall have 
to establish the nature of the consciousness at 
each of the dynamic poles — the nature of the 
consciousness, the direction of the dynamic- 
vital flow, the resultant physical-organic de- 
velopment and activity. This we must do 
before we can even begin to consider a genuine 
system of education. Education now is widely 
at sea. Having ceased to steer by the pole-star 
of the mind, having ceased to aim at the cram- 
ming of the intellect, it veers hither and thither 
hopelessly and absurdly. Education can never 



86 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

become a serious science until the human 
psyche is properly understood. And the hu- 
man psyche cannot begin to be understood un- 
til we enter the dark continent of the uncon- 
scious. Having begun to explore the uncon- 
scious, we find we must go from center to 
center, chakra to chakra, to use an old esoteric 
word. We must patiently determine the 
psychic manifestation at each center, and 
moreover, as we go, we must discover the 
psychic results of the interaction, the polarized 
interaction between the dynamic centers both 
within and without the individual. 

Here is a real job for the scientist, a job 
which eternity will never see finished though 
even to-morrow may see it well begun. It is a 
job which will at last free us from the most 
hateful of all shackles, the shackles of ideas 
and ideals. It is a great task of the liberators, 
those who work forever for the liberation of 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 87 

the free spontaneous psyche, the effective soul. 

In these few chapters we hope to hint at the 
establishment of the first field of the uncon- 
scious — at the nature of the consciousness 
manifested at each pole — and at the already 
complex range of dynamic polarity between 
the various poles. So far we have given the 
merest suggestion of the nature of the first 
plane of the unconscious and have attempted 
the opening of the second or upper plane. We 
profess no scientific exactitude, particularly in 
terminology. We merely wish intelligibly to 
open a way. 

To balance the solar plexus wakes the great 
plexus of the breast. In our era this plexus 
is the great planet of our psychic universe. In 
the previous sympathetic era the flower of the 
universal blossomed in the navel. But since 
Egypt the sun of creative activity beams from 
the breast, the heart of the supreme Man. This 



88 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

is to us the source of light — the loving heart, 
the Sacred Heart. Against this we contrast 
the devouring darkness of the lower man, the 
devouring whirlpool beneath the navel. Even 
theosophists don't realize that the universal 
lotus really blossoms in the abdomen — that our 
lower man, our dark, devouring whirlpool, 
was once the creative source, in human esti- 
mation. 

But in calling the heart the sun, the source 
of light, we are biologically correct even. 
For the roots of vision are in the cardiac 
plexus. But if we were to consider the heart 
itself, not its great nerve plexus, we should 
have to go further than the nervous system. 
If we had to consider the whole lambent 
blood-stream, we should have to descend too 
deep for our unpractised minds. Suffice it 
here to hint that the solar plexus is the first 
and main clue to the great alimentary-sexual 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 89 

activity in man, an activity at once functional 
and creatively emotional, whilst the cardiac 
plexus is first and main clue to the respiratory 
system and the active-productive manifesta- 
tions. The mouth and nostrils are gates to 
each great center, upper and lower — even the 
breasts have this duality. Yet the clue to res- 
piration and hand activity and vision is in the 
breast, while the clue to alimentation and pas- 
sion and sex is in the lower centers. The 
duality goes so far and is so profound. And 
the polarity! The great organs, as well as the 
lymphatic glands, depend each on its own 
specific center of the unconscious; each is de- 
rived from a specific dynamic conscious-clue, 
what we might almost call a soul-cell. The 
inherent unconscious, or soul, is the first nu- 
cleus subdivided, and from its own subdi- 
visions produced, from its own still-creative 
constellated nuclei, the organs, glands, nerve- 



90 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

centers of the human organism. This is our 
answer to materialism and idealism alike. 
The nuclear unconscious brought forth organs 
and consciousness alike. And the great nuclei 
of the unconscious still lie active in the great 
living nerve-centers, which nerve centers, from 
the original solar-plexus to the conclusive 
brain, form one great chain of dual polarity 
and amplified consciousness. 

All this is a mere incoherent stammering, 
broken first-words. To return to the direct 
path of our progress. It is not merely a meta- 
phor, to call the cardiac plexus the sun, the 
Light. It is metaphor in the first place, be- 
cause the conscious effluence which proceeds 
from this first upper center in the breast goes 
forth and plays upon its external object, as 
phosphorescent waves might break upon a 
ship and reveal its form. The transferring of 
the objective knowledge to the psyche is al- 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 9 1 

most the same as vision. It is root-vision. It 
happens before the eyes open. It is the first 
tremendous mode of apprehension, still dark, 
but moving towards light. It is the eye in the 
breast. Psychically, it is basic objective ap- 
prehension. Dynamically, it is love, devo- 
tional, administering love. 

Now we make already a discrimination be- 
tween the two natures, even of this first upper 
consciousness. First from the breast flows the 
devotional, self-outpouring of love, love which 
gives its all to the beloved. And back again 
returns to the ingathered objective conscious- 
ness, the first objective content of the psyche. 

This argues the dual polarity. From the 
positive pole of the cardiac plexus flows out 
that effluence which we call selfless love. It 
is really self-devoting love, not self-less. This 
is the one form of love we recognize. But 
from the strong ganglion of the shoulders pro- 



92 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

ceeds the negative circuit, which searches and 
explores the beloved, bringing back pure ob- 
jective apprehension, not critical, in the men- 
tal sense, and yet passionally discriminative. 

Let us discriminate between the two upper 
poles. From the sympathetic heart goes forth 
pure administering, like sunbeams. But from 
the strong thoracic center of the shoulders is 
exerted a strong rejective force, a force which, 
pressing upon the object of attention, in the 
mode of separation, succeeds in transferring 
to itself the impression of the object to which 
it has attended. This is the other half of de- 
votional love— perfect knowledge of the be- 
loved. 

Now this knowledge in itself argues a con- 
tradistinction between the lover and the be- 
loved. It is the very mould of the contra- 
distinction. It is the impress upon the lover 
of that which was separate from him, resistant 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 93 

to him, in the beloved. Objective knowledge 
is always of this kind — a knowledge based on 
unchangeable difference, a knowledge truly of 
the gulf that lies between the two beings near- 
est to each other. 

In two kinds, then, consists the activity of 
the unconscious on the first upper plane. 
Primal is the blissful sense of ineffable trans- 
fusion with the beloved, which we call love, 
and of which our era has perhaps enjoyed the 
full. It is a mode of creative consciousness 
essentially objective, but yet it preserves no 
object in the memory, even the dynamic mem- 
ory. It is a great objective flux, a streaming 
forth of the self in blissful departure, like sun- 
beams streaming. 

If this activity alone worked, then the self 
would utterly depart from its own integrity; 
it would pass out and merge with the beloved 
— which passing out and merging is the goal 



94 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

of enthusiasts. But living beings are kept in- 
tegral by the activity of the great negative 
pole. From the thoracic ganglion also the 
unconscious goes forth in its quest of the be- 
loved. But what does it go to seek? Real ob- 
jective knowledge. It goes to find out the 
wonders which itself does not contain and to 
transfer these wonders, as by impress, into it- 
self. It goes out to determine the limits of 
its own existence also. 

This is the second half of the activity of 
upper or self-less or spiritual love. There is 
a tremendous great joy in exploring and dis- 
covering the beloved. For what is the be- 
loved? She is that which I myself am not. 
Knowing the breach between us, the unclose- 
able gulf, I in the same breath realize her 
features. In the first mode of the upper con- 
sciousness there is perfect surpassing of all 
sense of division between the self and the be- 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 95 

loved. In the second mode the very discovery 
of the features of the beloved contains the full 
realization of the irreparable, or unsurpass- 
able, gulf. This is objective knowledge, as 
distinct from objective emotion. It contains 
always the element of self-amplification, as if 
the self were amplified by knowledge in the 
beloved. It should also contain the knowledge 
of the limits of the self. 

So it is with the Infant. Curious indeed 
is the look on the face of the Holy Child, in 
Leonardo's pictures, in Botticelli's, even in the 
beautiful Filippo Lippi. It is the Mother 
who crosses her hands on her breast, in su- 
preme acquiescence, recipient; it is the Child 
who gazes, with a kind of objective, strangely 
discerning, deep apprehension of her, startling 
to northern eyes. It is a gaze by no means of 
innocence, but of profound, pre-visual dis- 
cerning. So plainly is the child looking across 



96 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

the gulf and fixing the gulf by very intentness 
of pre-visual apprehension, that instinctively 
the ordinary northerner finds Him anti- 
pathetic. It seems almost a cruel objectivity. 

Perhaps between lovers, in the objective 
way of love, either the voluntary separative 
mode predominates, or the sympathetic mode 
of communion— one or the other. In the 
north we have worshipped the latter mode. 
But in the south it is different; the objective 
sapient manner of love seems more natural. 
Moreover in the face of the Infant lingers 
nearly always the dark look of the pristine 
mode of consciousness, the powerful self-cen- 
tering subjective mode, established in the 
lower body — the so-called sensual mode. 

But take our own children. A small infant, 
as soon as it really begins to direct its attention. 
How often it seems to be gazing across a 
strange distance at the mother; what a curious 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 97 

look is on its face, as if the mother were an 
object set across a far gulf, distinct however, 
discernible, even obtrusive in her need to be 
apprehended. A mother will chase away this 
look with kisses. But she cannot chase away 
the inevitable effluence of separatist, objective* 
apprehension. She herself sometimes will fall 
into a half-trance, and the child on her lap 
will resolve itself into a strange and separate 
object. She does not criticize or analyze him. 
She does not even perceive him. But as if 
rapt, she apprehends him lying there, an un- 
fathomable and inscrutable objective, outside 
herself, never to be grasped or included in her- 
self. She seizes as it were a sudden and final, 
objective impression of him. And the conclu- 
sive sensation is one of finality. Something 
final has happened to her. She has the strange 
sensation of unalterable certainty, a sensation 
at once profoundly gratifying and rather ap- 



98 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

palling. She possesses something, a certain 
entity of primal, pre-conscious knowledge. 
Let the child be what he may, her knowledge 
of him is her own, forever and final. It gives 
her a sense of wealth in possession, and of 
power. It gives her a sense also of fatality. 
From the very satisfaction of the objective 
finality derives the sense of fatality. It is a 
knowledge of the other being, but a knowl- 
edge which contains at the same time a final 
assurance of the eternal and insuperable gulf 
which lies between beings — the isolation of the 
self first. 

Thus the first plane of the upper conscious- 
ness — the outgoing, the sheer and unspeakable 
bliss of the sense of union, communion, at-one- 
ness with the beloved — and then the comple- 
mentary objective realization of the beloved, 
the realization of that which is apart, differ- 
ent. This realization is like riches to the ob- 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED 99 

jective consciousness. It is, as it were, the 
adding of another self to the own self, through 
the mode of apprehension. Through the mode 
of dynamic objective apprehension, which in 
our day we have gradually come to call im- 
agination, a man may in his time add on to 
himself the whole of the universe, by increas- 
ing pristine realization of the universal. This 
in mysticism is called the progress to infinity 
— that is, in the modern, truly male mysticism. 
The older female mysticism means something 
different by the infinite. 

But anyhow there it is. The attaining to 
the Infinite, about which the mystics have 
rhapsodized, is a definite process in the devel- 
oping unconscious, but a process in the devel- 
opment only of the objective-apprehensive 
centers — an exclusive process, naturally. 

A soul cannot come into its own through 
that love alone which is unison. If it stress the 



IOO PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

one mode, the sympathetic mode, beyond a 
certain point, it breaks its own integrity, and 
corruption sets in in the living organism. On 
both planes of love, upper and lower, the two 
modes must act complementary to one another, 
the sympathetic and the separatist. It is the 
absolute failure to see this, that has torn the 
modern world into two halves, the one half 
warring for the voluntary, objective, sepa- 
ratist control, the other for the pure sym- 
pathetic. The individual psyche divided 
against itself divides the world against itself, 
and an unthinkable progress of calamity en- 
sues unless there be a reconciliation. 

The goal of life is the coming to perfection 
of each single individual. This cannot take 
place without the tremendous interchange of 
love from all the four great poles of the first, 
basic field of consciousness. There must be 
the twofold passionate flux of sympathetic 



THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED IOI 

love, subjective-abdominal and objective-de- 
votional, both. And there must be the two- 
fold passional circuit of separatist realization, 
the lower, vital self-realization, and the up- 
per, intense realization of the other, a realiza- 
tion which includes a recognition of abysmal 
otherness. To stress any one mode, any one 
interchange, is to hinder all, and to cause cor- 
ruption in the end. The human psyche must 
have strength and pride to accept the whole 
fourfold nature of its own creative activity. 



CHAPTER VI 

HUMAN RELATIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

The AIM of this little book is merely to 
establish the smallest foothold in the swamp 
of vagueness which now goes by the name of 
the unconscious. At last we form some sort 
of notion what the unconscious actually is. It 
is that active spontaneity which rouses in each 
individual organism at the moment of fusion 
of the parent nuclei, and which, in polarized 
connection with the external universe, gradu- 
ally evolves or elaborates its own individual 
psyche and corpus, bringing both mind and 
body forth from itself. Thus it would seem 
that the term unconscious is only another word 
for life. But life is a general force, whereas 

the unconscious is essentially single and unique 

1 02 



HUMAN RELATIONS 103 

in each individual organism; it is the active, 
self-evolving soul bringing forth its own in- 
carnation and self-manifestation. Which in- 
carnation and self-manifestation seems to be 
the whole goal of the unconscious soul: the 
whole goal of life. Thus it is that the uncon- 
scious brings forth not only consciousness, but 
tissue and organs also. And all the time the 
working of each organ depends on the pri- 
mary spontaneous-conscious center of which 
it is the issue — if you like, the soul-center. 
And consciousness is like a web woven finally 
in the mind from the various silken strands 
spun forth from the primal center of the un- 
conscious. 

But the unconscious is never an abstraction, 
never to be abstracted. It is never an ideal 
entity. It is always concrete. In the very first 
instance, it is the glinting nucleus of the ovule. 
And proceeding from this, it is the chain or 



104 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

constellation of nuclei which derive directly 
from this first spark. And further still it is 
the great nerve-centers of the human body, in 
which the primal and pristine nuclei still act 
direct. The nuclei are centers of spontaneous 
consciousness. It seems as if their bright grain 
were germ-consciousness, consciousness ger- 
minating forever. If that is a mystery, it is 
not my fault. Certainly it is not mysticism. 
It is obvious, demonstrable scientific fact, to 
be verified under the microscope and within 
the human psyche, subjectively and object- 
ively, both. Of course, the subjective veri- 
fication is what men kick at. Thin-minded 
idealists cannot bear any appeal to their bow- 
els of comprehension. 

We can quite tangibly deal with the human 
unconscious. We trace its source and centers 
in the great ganglia and nodes of the nervous 
system. We establish the nature of the spon- 



HUMAN RELATIONS 105 

taneous consciousness at each of these centers; 
we determine the polarity and the direction 
of the polarized flow. And from this we know 
the motion and individual manifestation of 
the psyche itself; we also know the motion and 
rhythm of the great organs of the body. For 
at every point psyche and functions are so 
nearly identified that only by holding our 
breath can we realize their duality in identifi- 
cation — a polarized duality once more. But 
here is no place to enter the great investigation 
of the duality and polarization of the vital- 
creative activity and the mechanico-material 
activity. The two are two in one, a polarized 
quality. They are unthinkably different. 

On the first field of human conscious — the 
first plane of the unconscious — we locate four 
great spontaneous centers, two below the dia- 
phragm, two above. These four centers con- 
trol the four greatest organs. And they give 



106 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

rise to the whole basis of human conscious- 
ness. Functional and psychic at once, this is 
their first polar duality. 

But the polarity is further. The horizontal 
division of the diaphragm divides man for- 
ever into his individual duality, the duality 
of the upper and lower man, the two great 
bodies of upper and lower consciousness and 
function. This is the horizontal line. 

The vertical division between the voluntary 
and the sympathetic systems, the line of di- 
vision between the spinal system and the great 
plexus-system of the front of the human body, 
forms the second distinction into duality. It 
is the great difference between the soft, recipi- 
ent front of the body and the wall of the back. 
The front of the body is the live end of the 
magnet. The back is the closed opposition. 
And again there are two parallel streams of 
function and consciousness, vertically separate 



HUMAN RELATIONS 107 

now. This is the vertical line of division. 
And the horizontal line and the vertical line 
form the cross of all existence and being. And 
even this is not mysticism — no more than the 
ancient symbols used in botany or biology. 

On the first field of human consciousness, 
which is the basis of life and consciousness, 
are the four first poles of spontaneity. These 
have their fourfold polarity within the indi- 
vidual, again figured by the cross. But the 
individual is never purely a thing-by-himself. 
He cannot exist save in polarized relation to 
the external universe, a relation both func- 
tional and psychic-dynamic. Development 
takes place only from the polarized circuits 
of the dynamic unconscious, and these circuits 
must be both individual and extra-individual. 
There must be the circuit of which the com- 
plementary pole is external to the individual. 

That is, in the first place there must be the 



108 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

other individual. There must be a polarized 
connection with the other individual — or even 
other individuals. On the first field there are 
four poles in each individual. So that the 
first, the basic field of extra-individual con- 
sciousness contains eight poles — an eightfold 
polarity, a fourfold circuit. It may be that 
between two individuals, even mother and 
child, the polarity may be established only 
fourfold, a dual circuit. It may be that one 
circuit of spontaneous consciousness may never 
be fully established. This means, for a child, 
a certain deficiency in development, a psychic 
inadequacy. 

So we are again face to face with the basic 
problem of human conduct. No human be- 
ing can develop save through the polarized 
connection with other beings. This circuit of 
polarized unison precedes all mind and all 
knowing. It is anterior to and ascendant over 



HUMAN RELATIONS 109 

the human will. And yet the mind and the 
will can both interfere with the dynamic cir- 
cuit, an idea, like a stone wedged in a 
delicate machine, can arrest one whole proc- 
ess of psychic interaction and spontaneous 
growth. 

How then? Man doth not live by bread 
alone. It is time we made haste to settle the 
bread question, which after all is only the 
A B C of social economies, and proceeded to 
devote our attention to this much more pro- 
found and vital question : how to establish and 
maintain the circuit of vital polarity from 
which the psyche actually develops, as the 
body develops from the circuit of alimentation 
and respiration. We have reached the stage 
where we can settle the alimentation and res- 
piration problems almost off-hand. But woe 
betide us, the unspeakable agony we suffer 
from the failure to establish and maintain the 



I IO PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

vital circuits between ourselves and the ef- 
fectual correspondent, the other human be- 
ing, other human beings, and all the extra- 
neous universe. The tortures of psychic star- 
vation which civilized people proceed to suf- 
fer, once they have solved for themselves the 
bread-and-butter problem of alimentation, 
will not bear thought. Delicate, creative de- 
sire, sending forth its fine vibrations in search 
of the true pole of magnetic rest in another 
human being or beings, how it is thwarted, in- 
sulated by a whole set of India-rubber ideas 
and ideals and conventions, till every form of 
perversion and death-desire sets in! How can 
we escape neuroses? Psychoanalysis won't 
tell us. But a mere shadow of understand- 
ing of the true unconscious will give us the 
hint. 

The amazingly difficult and vital business 
of human relationship has been almost laugh- 



HUMAN RELATIONS III 

ably underestimated in our epoch. All this 
nonsense about love and unselfishness, more 
crude and repugnant than savage fetish-wor- 
ship. Love is a thing to be learned, through 
centuries of patient effort. It is a difficult, 
complex maintenance of individual integrity 
throughout the incalculable processes of inter- 
human-polarity. Even on the first great plane 
of consciousness, four prime poles in each in- 
dividual, four powerful circuits possible be- 
tween two individuals, and each of the four 
circuits to be established to perfection and yet 
maintained in pure equilibrium with all the 
others. Who can do it? Nobody. Yet we 
have all got to do it, or else suffer ascetic tor- 
tures of starvation and privation or of distor- 
tion and overstrain and slow collapse into cor- 
ruption. The whole of life is one long, blind 
effort at an established polarity with the outer 
universe, human and non-human; and the 



1 1 2 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

whole of modern life is a shrieking failure. 
It is our own fault. 

The actual evolution of the individual 
psyche is a result of the interaction between 
the individual and the outer universe. Which 
means that just as a child in the womb grows 
as a result of the parental blood-stream which 
nourishes the vital quick of the foetus, so does 
every man and woman grow and develop as a 
result of the polarized flux between the spon- 
taneous self and some other self or selves. It 
is the circuit of vital flux between itself and 
another being or beings which brings about 
the development and evolution of every indi- 
vidual psyche and physique. This is a law 7 of 
life and creation, from which we cannot es- 
cape. Ascetics and voluptuaries both try to 
dodge this main condition, and both succeed 
perhaps for a generation. But after two gen- 
erations all collapses. Man doth not live by 



HUMAN RELATIONS 113 

bread alone. He lives even more essentially 
from the nourishing creative flow between 
himself and another or others. 

This is the reality of the extra-individual 
circuits of polarity, those established between 
two or more individuals. But a corresponding 
reality is that of the internal, purely indi- 
vidual polarity — the polarity within a man 
himself of his upper and lower consciousness, 
and his own voluntary and sympathetic modes. 
Here is a fourfold interaction within the self. 
And from this fourfold reaction within the 
self results that final manifestation which we 
know as mind, mental consciousness. 

The brain is, if we may use the word, the 
terminal instrument of the dynamic conscious- 
ness. It transmutes what is a creative flux 
into a certain fixed cypher. It prints off, like 
a telegraph instrument, the glyphs and grafic 
representations which we call percepts, con- 



1 14 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

cepts, ideas. It produces a new reality — the 
ideal. The idea is another static entity, an- 
other unit of the mechanical-active and ma- 
terio-static universe. It is thrown off from 
life, as leaves are shed from a tree, or as 
feathers fall from a bird. Ideas are the dry, 
unliving, inscutient plumage which inter- 
venes between us and the circumambient uni- 
verse, forming at once an insulator and an in- 
strument for the subduing of the universe. 
The mind is the instrument of instruments; it 
is not a creative reality. 

Once the mind is awake, being in itself a 
finality, it feels very assured. "The word be- 
came flesh, and began to put on airs," says 
Norman Douglas wittily. It is exactly what 
happens. Mentality, being automatic in its 
principle like the machine, begins to assume 
life. It begins to affect life, to pretend to 
make and unmake life. "In the beginning was 



HUMAN RELATIONS 1 15 

the Word." This is the presumptuous mas- 
querading of the mind. The Word cannot be 
the beginning of life. It is the end of life, 
that which falls shed. The mind is the dead 
end of life. But it has all the mechanical force 
of the non-vital universe. It is a great dynamo 
of super-mechanical force. Given the will 
as accomplice, it can even arrogate its ma- 
chine-motions and automatizations over the 
whole of life, till every tree becomes a clipped 
tea-pot and every man a useful mechanism. 
So we see the brain, like a great dynamo and 
accumulator, accumulating mechanical force 
and presuming to apply this mechanical force- 
control to the living unconscious, subjecting 
everything spontaneous to certain machine- 
principles called ideals or ideas. 

And the human will assists in this humili- 
ating and sterilizing process. We don't know 
what the human will is. But we do know that 



1 1 6 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

it is a certain faculty belonging to every living 
organism, the faculty for self-determination. 
It is a strange faculty of the soul itself, for its 
own direction. The will is indeed the faculty 
which every individual possesses from the very 
moment of conception, for exerting a certain 
control over the vital and automatic processes 
of his own evolution. It does not depend origi- 
nally on mind. Originally it is a purely spon- 
taneous control-factor of the living uncon- 
scious. It seems as if, primarily, the will and 
the conscience were identical, in the pre- 
mental state. It seems as if the will were 
given as a great balancing faculty, the faculty 
whereby automatization is prevented in the 
evolving psyche. The spontaneous will reacts 
at once against the exaggeration of any one 
particular circuit of polarity. Any vital cir- 
cuit — a fact known to psychoanalysis. And 
against this automatism, this degradation from 



HUMAN RELATIONS 117 

the spontaneous-vital reality into the me- 
chanic-material reality, the human soul must 
always struggle. And the will is the power 
which the unique self possesses to right itself 
from automatism. 

Sometimes, however, the free psyche really 
collapses, and the will identifies itself with an 
automatic circuit. Then a complex is set up, 
a paranoia. Then incipient madness sets in. 
If the identification continues, the derange- 
ment becomes serious. There may come sud- 
den jolts of dislocation of the whole psychic 
flow, like epilepsy. Or there may come any 
of the known forms of primary madness. 

The second danger is that the will shall 
identify itself with the mind and become an 
instrument of the mind. The same process of 
automatism sets up, only now it is slower. The 
mind proceeds to assume control over every 
organic-psychic circuit. The spontaneous 



1 1 8 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

flux is destroyed, and a certain automatic cir- 
cuit substituted. Now an automatic establish- 
ment of the psyche must, like the building of 
a machine, proceed according to some definite 
fixed scheme, based upon certain fixed prin- 
ciples. And it is here that ideals and ideas 
enter. They are the machine-plan and the 
machine-principles of an automatized psyche. 

So, humanity proceeds to derange itself, to 
automatize itself from the mental conscious- 
ness. It is a process of derangement, just as 
the fixing of the will upon any other primary 
process is a derangement. It is a long, slow 
development in madness. Quite justly do the 
advanced Russian and French writers acclaim 
madness as a great goal. It is the genuine 
goal of self-automatism, mental-conscious su- 
premacy. 

True, we must all develop into mental con- 
sciousness. But mental-consciousness is not a 



HUMAN RELATIONS • 119 

goal; it is a cul-de-sac. It provides us only 
with endless appliances which we can use for 
the all-too-difficult business of coming to our 
spontaneous-creative fullness of being. It 
provides us with means to adjust ourselves to 
the external universe. It gives us further 
means for subduing the external, materio- 
mechanical universe to our great end of crea- 
tive life. And it gives us plain indications of 
how to avoid falling into automatism, hints 
for the applying of the will, the loosening of 
false, automatic fixations, the brave adherence 
to a profound soul-impulse. This is the use 
of the mind — a great indicator and instrument. 
The mind as author and director of life is 
anathema. 

So, the few things we have to say about the 
unconscious end for the moment. There is 
almost nothing said. Yet it is a beginning. 
Still remain to be revealed the other great 



120 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 

centers of the unconscious. We know four: 
two pairs. In all there are seven planes. That 
is, there are six dual centers of spontaneous 
polarity, and then the final one. That is, the 
great upper and lower consciousness is only 
just broached — the further heights and depths 
are not even hinted at. Nay, in public it would 
hardly be allowed us to hint at them. There 
is so much to know, and every step of the 
progress in knowledge is a death to the human 
idealism which governs us now so ruthlessly 
and vilely. It must die, and we will break 
free. But what tyranny is so hideous as that 
of an automatically ideal humanity? 



